This blog is about the Linux Command Line Interface (CLI), with an occasional foray into GUI territory.
Instead of just giving you information like some man page, I hope to illustrate each command in real-life scenarios.

Search This Blog

Sunday, April 11, 2010

My objective is to insert the complete contents of a text file at a specific row and column of another text file.

If we are merely concerned with inserting after a specific line, it can be readily achieved with a number of Linux tools. For example, to insert file1.txt after the second line of file2.txt, any of the following commands will do:

The key is +2:3 which directs the editor to open the file at line 2 column 3.

Two other components in the above emacs command warrant some explanation. First, -Q means quick startup. Quick, because emacs won't load any init file, or any splash file. Second, the last part of the command pipes any standard error output from the emacs editor to the null device.

I don't doubt that sed, awk or perl can do the job. If you have a simple solution, please share with us via the comment feature of this web page. Many thanks.